You Can Finally Score Face-Value Concert Tickets

It used to be impossible to score good seats to big shows, with brokers using bots to snatch roughly half the tickets. But in 2016, Ticketmaster launched Verified Fan, which uses an algorithm that weeds out fishy sales. It worked. Only three percent of tickets for Bruce Springsteen's Broadway run were resold, and 70 artists have joined in. "We're doubling down on it," says David Marcus, a vice president at Ticketmaster. Taylor Swift signed up, with a twist: Fans who bought merch or watched her videos got priority. Others may follow her lead. "Ticketing has been lacking that sort of innovative thinking," says Larry Rudolph, manager of Britney Spears.